Washington: In a sweltering capital threatened by storms, the traditional Fourth of July parade Thursday served as a warm-up act to a distinctly non-traditional evening event at the Lincoln Memorial, where President Donald Trump planned to command the stage against the backdrop of a show of military muscle.

A woman stands in the rain at the Lincoln Memorial before President Donald Trump’s ‘Salute to America’ event.Credit:AP

Protesters unimpressed by his "Salute to America" program inflated a roly-poly balloon depicting Trump as an angry, diaper-clad baby.

By adding his own, one-hour production to festivities that typically draw hundreds of thousands anyway, Trump set himself up to be the first president in nearly seven decades to address a crowd at the National Mall on Independence Day. "I will speak on behalf of our great Country!" he said in a morning tweet. "Perhaps even Air Force One will do a low & loud sprint over the crowd."

An afternoon downpour drenched the Independence Day crowds and presaged an evening of possible on-and-off storms, raising some suspense about whether Trump's program of military fly-overs and the capital's annual July 4 fireworks would be interrupted.

The rain chased off a steady stream of people while others arrived, using plastic bags and chairs and covers of baby strollers for shelter.

A woman holds up a sign before Independence Day celebrations on the National Mall in Washington. Credit:AP

Trump set aside a historic piece of real estate – a stretch of the Mall from the Lincoln Monument to the midpoint of the reflecting pool – for a mix of invited military members, Republican and Trump campaign donors and other bigwigs.

It's where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I have a dream" speech, Barack Obama and Trump held inaugural concerts and protesters swarmed into the water when supporters of Richard Nixon put on a July 4, 1970, celebration, with the president sending taped remarks from California.

Aides to the crowd-obsessed Trump fretted about the prospect of empty seats at his event, said a person familiar with the planning who was not authorised to be identified.

Aides scrambled in recent days to distribute tickets and mobilise the Trump and GOP social media accounts to encourage participation for an event hastily arranged and surrounded with confusion.

National Park Service rangers view a Baby Trump balloon before Independence Day celebrations.Credit:AP

In the shadow of the Washington Monument, the anti-war organisation Codepink erected a 20-foot tall "Trump baby" balloon to protest what it called the president's co-opting of Independence Day.

"We think that he is making this about himself and it's really a campaign rally," said Medea Benjamin, the organization's co-director.

"We think that he's a big baby. … He's erratic, he's prone to tantrums, he doesn't understand the consequences of his actions. And so this is a great symbol of how we feel about our president."

AP

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